The Grand (2007)

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely Brilliant!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Very funny and hilarious movie showing the colorful and odd personalities in the poker world. Some real pro-poker players staring this movie so their interaction with the actors is even more funny. As absurd and funny some scenes may seem as a guy who watch and play poker a lot it brings me so many memories. The cast is great and when I see some of the actors elsewhere they immediately bring me back to this movie. There are so many quotes from the actual poker players in this movie which are present so well and spot on. Even commentators in this movie are some weird funny guys as it is in the World Series of Poker for example.

The Grand is an improvisational comedy which ultimately is a letdown because it simply is not funny enough. There are some talented performers here who you would think might be able to make something like this work but it never really comes together. The movie has its moments but even at its best it is never really laugh out loud funny. And for whatever moments there might be which kind of work there are many more moments which just don't work at all. Doing improv can be like walking a high wire without a net. And this movie more or less falls off that high wire and goes splat.The movie centers around a major, $10 million winner-take-all poker tournament and the eclectic, eccentric cast of characters chasing the big prize. Unfortunately most of these characters are probably a little too eccentric to be taken seriously. Then again this is not really a movie meant to be taken seriously, it's meant to make you laugh. A shame then that it fails at that too. There may be some mild chuckles here and there but the movie never hits any great comedic heights. Among the performers David Cross is the only one who really stands out. He's actually very good. Everyone else ranges from mediocre to total dud. Woody Harrelson's the purported star of the movie and he's rather lifeless although to be fair it almost has to be that way for the character he's playing. Richard Kind, playing a poker novice, is moderately amusing but none of the other major players in the tournament bring much to the table. And some of the supporting performances are terribly disappointing. Michael McKean's character is eccentric to the point of stupidity. It doesn't work at all. Ray Romano has probably never in his life been as desperately unfunny as he is in this movie. Gabe Kaplan is incredibly dull. And poker commentator Mike Werbe, played by Michael Karnow, is an impossibly annoying abomination. Every time he opens his mouth you want to reach inside the screen and slap him. And, while a novel concept, improvising the poker poses a major problem as well. Because if the actors play stupidly your big finish will not ring true to any serious poker player and it will ultimately doom the movie to failure. And never underestimate the ability of actors to play poker stupidly. Let's just say it ends up being a little difficult to believe in some of these characters as professional poker players after actually watching them play. Although to be fair by the time we get to the end the movie was probably doomed to failure anyway no matter how the poker played out. This movie was an interesting idea which unfortunately was not executed well at all.

"The Grand" is a mockumentary about six internet poker players who gather in Las Vegas for a $10 million, winner-take-all tournament.A game, eclectic cast - Woody Harrelson, Hank Azaria, Chris Parnell, Ray Romano, Werner Herzog, Gabe Kaplan - struggles with a mediocre script that, in tone as well as in style, steals clumsily from all those far superior Christopher Guest movies like "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind." In the case of "The Grand," the humor is largely lacking, as each eccentric character plays out his little assigned shtick over and over and over again.As executed by writer/director Zak Penn, the poker scenes are particularly languid and lifeless and utterly incomprehensible to any non-poker players who may happen to be a part of the audience.

for some reason the cover of this movie had me worried it was corny and awful, but with actors like David cross, werner herzog, and cheryl hines, i really wanted to give it a chance. what i ended up watching was hours of horrible snl style skits, done over and over again, with no punch-line, no intelligent thought, and terrible film-making/acting. how all these actors got together and decided to do this is beyond me, unless they were already going to be in town to play poker anyways or something. don't waste your time seeing this movie, its seriously the worst thing I've seen in a long time. it tries to be a "David guest" style mocu-mentary, but fails horribly, and ends up giving whoever watches it a headache and a horrible impression of who people like werner herzog and David cross are, don't judge them by the fact that they are in this movie, they are both talented individuals.